If you are like me, you are going to be careful this spring when going into your favorite café and ordering an ice-coffee. Here’s why.
Over the last year, big names in specialty coffee like Blue Bottle, Stumptown and Cuvee Coffee have made sizable investments into their production of high-quality cold-brew coffees that you can find at their locations, associated cafes or specialty retailers. I have also seen Starbucks’ dedicated entry into the cold-brew world with their recent launch of their company-wide, slow-brew product available in most locations. So, what has happened in the last year to provoke specialty and mass-market brands to make significant investments into cold-brew? It’s an easy answer: it’s better than hot brewed, iced coffee and consumers are buying it in droves.
If you are like me, the first idea that comes to mind when these sorts of products hit the market is: ”How do I make this stuff for myself?” I’m not always averse to buying a $4-6 ice coffee (if it’s made well), but after awhile I just want to make it at home for myself…because, let’s face it…I generally learn how to make it better than the big boys, once I understand how they do it.
In looking for the right recipe, one will find that there are quite a few options to make one’s own cold-brew at home. The cheap and dirty method is basically grinding up some coffee and placing it in a Ball jar to let it steep overnight. This is the first step I took to experiment with trying to get as close as I could to the big guys. Apparently, you have got to know what you are doing to make coffee this way and get a result that doesn’t make you want to spit it out. I noticed that regular coffee blends (even from good coffee roasters) really did not end up creating something that I liked to drink.
The next step really was to move away from the Ball jar because I knew there must be a way to get the clearer and cleaner brew that lacked the bitter and stereotypically chocolaty, coffee taste from which I was trying to escape. There’s certainly nothing wrong with having one’s coffee with these characteristics, but I have come to realize that there’s so much more that a good cold-brew can reveal in a coffee.
I had considered some of the commercial immersion techniques that predominate the coffee-making world like the Toddy as they are relatively inexpensive to buy and are widely available. One brew using the immersion method brought out a dirty and bitter flavor from my single origin Ethiopian beans, so I was quick to move on to something different.
Next, I looked at an array of gravity fed, cold-water drippers on the market. The idea of this sort of brewing method always has made sense to me as I know coffee to exhibit some undesired flavors when left too long in a bucket of water. I had first seen these devices in the downtown location of Blue Bottle in San Francisco. It was the first thing that caught my eye when I stepped into the café as it looked like something out of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello with a warm, wooden frame, golden accents and hand blown glass. I could have stared at it all day. I came to find out that it was a device called an Oji. These are the crown jewels of Kyoto Drippers. There is a stately presence of the device that not only serves its purpose in creating a superb cup of coffee, but also is the center of conversation in any location. I evaluated a couple of other brands; however, the Oji seemed to be the device out of which I thought I would never graduate. It is a unique work-of-art.
I came to find that there is something about an Oji that really sets itself apart from other brands. Since I am never one to go for the next-best versions of any product, I went for the gold and bought the Oji.
One important note here: There were more counterfeits of the Oji than any other device online. There are quite a few manufacturers of these knock-offs in China and Taiwan, so one really must be careful if trying to nail down the real thing. There is a danger in buying these devices as they are always made of inferior quality, may be constructed of unhealthy components, and have no customer support in the United States.
Once it arrived, I unboxed it, looked at the instructional video to set it up online and then got to it. I ventured down to pick up a favorite Ethiopian Yirgacheffe from a noteworthy roaster that seemed to have some beautiful floral and tea-like characteristics. From reading a couple of blog posts, I knew that I had to choose very special, single-origin, light roasted coffees to get the type of cold-brew that knocked my socks off.
The result: The finest, most delicate brew I have ever had the pleasure of sampling. There’s an incredible difference between the brew that came through my Oji versus anything else that I ever tasted. I have made all sorts of brews over the past several months each with their own distinctive characteristics. I saw someone online the other day using the device for teas and for alcoholic infusions. I am much more of a coffee drinker; however, I am going to buy some more cotton filters and try doing a couple of teas.
Now, I feel like have found the answer to my quest of being able to make the best batches of cold-brew available on the market. As these devices permeate into the United States coffee market, make sure to be on the lookout for stores that make cold-brew through these devices. Since they are a wonder to display, you will always know a store makes it’s cold-brew through this method when you see a device out in the open for everyone to see. Generally speaking, most coffee shops won’t be displaying their immersion buckets on the counter, so it’s usually a sign that they are making your cold-brew in a 5 gallon bucket.